


Point of No Return

by JWAB



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Angst, Blindness, Dancing is dangerous, F/M, sexy hand things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-03
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-01-07 08:14:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1117582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JWAB/pseuds/JWAB
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The long, frustrating road from partners to lovers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Point of No Return

**Author's Note:**

> After another showdown, wounded and exhausted, Ichabod and Abbie contemplate the cabin's only bed. "Look, you're hurt and I'm tired and it's cold, simple as that." If only that were true.

**Point of No Return**

“I am capable of looking after myself.”

“Come on, Crane. I can see it hurts like hell.” She kneels on the floor beside his chair, pushing aside his arm, then coat, to examine the wound. “Your shirt,” she says, fingering a ragged tear lined with blood.

“The day seems to have arrived,” Ichabod groans, pulling the hem of his shirt out from his waistband, “to retire this fine garment.” He lifts the hem so that they both can inspect the bloody gash across his lower ribs.

Abbie whistles through her teeth. “Damn.”

“A scrape, nothing more,” Ichabod protests. He moves to wipe some of the blood away with his sleeve, but only manages to cover it with a layer of muddy dirt.

“Up,” she insists, lifting him by his armpits.

“Miss Mills, I am perfectly capable --”

“Got to clean you up and there’s no use arguing. It’s gonna happen with or without your consent.”

They move the operation to the bathroom, where Ichabod perches, mortified, on the closed toilet. She wets a towel and presses it against the wound. “Hold that,” Abbie directs, then helps him off with his threadbare shirt, careful to guide it so he doesn’t have to stretch or twist. 

Next, she rifles through the medicine cabinet. Not much here, but it will do. She drenches a cotton ball with witch hazel and kneels in front of him, dabbing the dirt and blood around the wound until she can finally see it. It’s definitely a gash – not as deep as she expected from all the blood, but wide. It’s going to be uncomfortable for a week at least. She goes through a dozen cotton balls, wiping gently until the wound is clean, then smears a layer of Neosporin over it before it’s ready for the bandage. He helps her hold the gauze in place while she tapes the thing on. “Keep this clean and dressed and you should be better in no time.” 

His gaze darts back and forth between Abbie and the site of her ministrations. “You are a gifted nurse, Miss Mills.” 

“First aid class came in handy, I guess.” She gives the rectangle of tape one last check. “Are you hurt anywhere else?” 

He shakes his head. 

“Up you go then,” she insists, and he follows her out into the bedroom. “You want another shirt to sleep in? I’m sure there’s something here…” 

“There are several small shirts in the wardrobe – Miss Jenny’s, I gather. Nothing to fit the likes of me, I’m afraid.” He yawns suddenly, before he can stifle it. How unseemly to appear tired in front of a guest, but he hasn’t slept in at least 24 hours. “My apologies.” 

“It’s been a brutal couple of days. Of course you’re tired. So am I. And it’s late.” His yawn is contagious, and soon the weight of their exhaustion is undeniable. “Mind if I sleep here tonight?” 

“I’d be honored, Miss Mills.” 

She smiles, leaning over to pry off her boots. She leaves them by the door and goes around to the far side of the narrow double bed, the only bed in the cabin. He bows and turns to go. 

“Where do you think you’re going?” Abbie asks, raising an eyebrow. 

“The floor, with a blanket, will be sufficient for me,” he tells her, averting his eyes. 

Abbie shakes her head, pulling the covers back. “You’re wounded, Crane. I’m not letting you sleep on the floor. And I’m too tired to wrestle with that spine-cracking couch. We’ll both be fine right here. Plus it’s way too cold to spare one of these blankets, and you without a shirt.” 

“But I would hate for anyone to think less of you, Miss Mills.” It is only the first of many arguments on the tip of his tongue. 

“Nobody needs to know we’re sharing a bed – for _sleeping_. Not that anybody I know would care. Look, you’re hurt and I’m tired and it’s cold, simple as that.” She pronounces it with such finality, a gavel would not be out of place. 

However, for Ichabod, sharing a bed with Miss Mills is not simple. Even aside from the intrusive frisson he now feels at her every touch, the _simple_ fact is that he is married. How would it appear to Katrina, were she to see them? The prospect of faithlessness pierces like a nail, but the still-bright sting of her betrayal is the response. Her lies of omission, her deceit – they galvanize him. 

Moloch holds her captive, yes, and Abraham’s menace remains, but she is not blameless. It was her spell that propelled him two hundred years into the future. 

If he must share a bed with Miss Mills, Katrina has no grounds to protest. 

“’Miss Mills’,” she says with a tsk, climbing into bed. “Come on, now. You’ve got a phone, you’ve conquered the internet, you’re a champion at the fist bump. You can call me Abbie.” 

“As you wish,” he agrees, still refusing to say her name. It would be too personal; it would collapse their distance too precipitously. With everything they must still face together, and the way she…. No, he’ll just have to avoid naming her altogether. He forces a conciliatory grin and slides carefully onto the close edge of the narrow double bed, wincing at a sharp pain under the bandage. 

“It’s not like anything’s gonna happen,” Abbie argues softly, pulling the sheet and blankets up over her chest. 

“Quite right,” Ichabod agrees, settling himself on the edge, careful not to let any part of his long frame touch any part of hers. 

They lie side by side, pretending not to be wide awake, for what seems like hours. Ichabod’s breath is too fast and too loud in his ears. He has an itch on his nose, his shoulder; he has to sneeze. He stifles a cough and stares up at the ceiling. How many hours until dawn? 

Abbie curls onto her left, facing the wall. The mattress is hard and lumpy. It might as well be the cold hard ground outside; it might as well be the slate in front of the fireplace. If it were, at least she could stretch out and stop feeling so… weird. It’s weird. And if she’s honest with herself, there is nothing simple about lying beside Ichabod. 

Crane. His name is Crane. 

The thing is that he’s different. He’s stilted and proper and so damn confused. He’s a lot of work, truth be told. And he looks like a damn pirate. 

That’s not really the thing, though, is it? The thing – the real thing – is that something is happening, some collusion between her brain and her guts that makes her want to be around him even when she doesn’t have to be. And since it’s past midnight and what’s the point of lying to herself: yeah, she feels a spark. Not that it matters, because he’s married, but for her there is definitely something going on. A little. Nothing she can’t manage. But there are a few things she likes a little too much. The way he shrugs on his coat. The way his eyes burn with ferocious determination. The way he holds a gun (and when she corrected him, the way his hips felt under her hands). Nope, no parentheses. What’s the point of parentheses in the middle of the night when you’re talking to yourself? Okay then. The way his hips felt under her hands. The way his hands feel in her hands. His heart is tangled in knots, the poor man – what he must be going through, it’s unimaginable – but he still has room for her there. 

And he is lying right here, hips and hands and heart, right next to her. And there is no way he’s asleep. 

“Crane, you sleeping?” Abbie asks the wall. 

“No,” he says, his voice nearly all whisper. 

“What’s wrong? You’re not still freaking out about sharing this bed, are you?” 

“No, I’m not.” 

“How’s your scrape?” 

Ichabod presses gently against the bandage. It aches. “Perfect. I’m cured.” 

Abbie laughs, sharp and louder than she expected. She hears him breathe a sigh and feels his body relax a little in the space behind her. “So what are you thinking about?” 

“Recent revelations.” 

“Jeremy?” 

Ichabod sighs deeply, despite himself. Abbie can feel the low rumble of it through the mattress. “Yes,” he admits softly. 

He doesn’t elaborate. Maybe he can’t. His breathing becomes shallower. After a few minutes, she feels him lift his right hand to his face. As he lets it fall again, she reaches behind her and takes it in hers. No real thought behind it. It’s a gesture of support, directly from her heart to his. Any errant sparks are all in her head. 

She threads her fingers between his and they lie there like that, awkwardly, her arm twisted behind her, his arm laying across his body to hang in the space between them. It pinches the gash on his side, making him wince. He squeezes her hand; she squeezes back. 

After a few minutes, he curls onto his left side, keeping his hand in hers. It’s a little better like this. She feels the slack in their arms and draws their hands closer to her, onto her hip. He scoots a few inches closer and together they let their clasped hands fall in front of her. 

“Is this --?” he begins. 

“Shh,” she assures him with another squeeze. 

This is better, isn’t it? It’s comfort, Abbie tells herself, it’s like a hug but horizontal and in the dark. And this bed really isn’t big enough for both of them to lie next to each other without touching. It’s not a big deal. His hips squared behind hers, his knees pressing gently against the backs of her legs – it’s because he’s really too tall for the bed. The warmth of his arm and his chest, his breath against her neck, none of it means anything. Friends used to sleep in beds together all the time, right? 

Probably not like this. 

He doesn’t acclimate immediately, but Ichabod’s anxiety eventually eases. It restores him to feel her here, nestled against him. She is smaller than he realized – she always appears somehow larger with a gun in her hands. But in this bed, her breath light and even, the deep curve of her waist under his arm, she seems unbearably small and warm. Without deciding it, he pulls her just an inch closer. Human comfort, nothing more, no matter that the scent of her skin stirs him. But what harm can come from the fire her scent kindles in him? He would never make an unwanted advance. 

Maybe Abbie didn’t think this hand-holding idea through. It feels great – she’s never been with a guy this tall, and it turns out this here is the arrangement spooning was invented for – but they are straight up cuddling now. His right hand is inches from her breasts and the weight of his arm on her waist makes her hyper aware of her curvy figure, no way around it. And his hips? Yeah, she is statue-still; if she were to move at all, she would brush up against The Part and that might give him the wrong idea. Which it is. The wrong idea. 

But she really wants to swirl her hips backward in a little spiral. Not _her_ exactly – her body wants to. Her hips have a mind of their own, and they are all about pressing backward into his. 

“May your dreams be sweet,” he whispers into her hair. 

She tries to answer “yours too,” but the words rush out in a gruff breath, betraying the need she has been careful to hide. He exhales in response. It sounds hungry. 

That’s when it begins, in unspoken agreement. She swirls a tiny spiral and he barely thrusts into it but things change nonetheless. His throaty sigh seals it for her, so that when he withdraws his hand from hers, finally letting it float over her breasts, she doesn’t pull away. Instead she arches her back, just barely, offering them into his open hand. His fingers play over the soft cotton fabric that does nothing to conceal the hard nipples underneath. 

The unmistakable timbre of her desire, her chest rising and falling under his touch – all of it is utterly tantalizing. His long fingers feather across the exposed skin at her collarbone; he feels her shudder. He smiles to himself, teasing her sensitive skin with his fingertips, tracing small circles where her pulse beats, then languid strokes along the muscles of her neck. He respects the boundaries he encounters: the collar of her shirt, the angle of her jaw, focusing only on skin she has chosen to expose, and avoiding her face. He senses that to brush her lips with his fingers would lead to a kiss, a point of no return.  

Her hips were right, turns out. The swirl was the way to go. Her spine is serpentine now, slinking in swirl after swirl, brushing against him. He is no longer still, but responds in rhythm, gently pressing back. She lifts her head so he can curl his left arm under her head; she slides her left arm along the triangle his makes. He envelops her. They fit pretty perfectly. And he wants this – whatever this is. She can hear it in his breath, feel it in the urgent press of those hips against her. 

She lets her right arm cross over his, skimming across her hip to his. She follows their rhythm, doesn’t direct it, but when his hips curl toward her, she reinforces it, pressing him harder against her. He exhales then, heavy, as if a weight has been lifted. His fingers suddenly tremble at her neck. It would be impossible to miss. But her hand is so warm, he feels it even through his trousers, and if only they could remove some of this damned fabric…   

It occurs to her that lying this way, not facing him, she could be standing in for Katrina without realizing it. The thought bolts through her. No way. That is not what this is about. She won’t allow it. 

Her body tenses, pulling closer to the wall. “I’m not her.” 

Ichabod leans his forehead against the back of her head. “Abbie,” he whispers, reassuring her, chiding her for even considering it. 

It unlocks something in her, hearing him say her name. She knows what it means. She resolves never to insist he call her Abbie in everyday life again. Nope, her name can be reserved for the most intimate moments, like this. 

But that feather thing he’s been doing is too good to let him stop. Without thinking it through – now is not the time -- she sits up just enough to remove her t-shirt, then lies her head back down into the cradle made by Ichabod’s arm. Ichabod, not Crane, not without her shirt. She snuggles backward into his bare chest, careful to avoid too much pressure against the bandage. They are both so warm it almost makes her laugh. 

His right hand wanders over her, appreciating her shoulder, the swell of her chest. Her hand finds his hip again and he thanks her with a feathery stroke up and down the length of her arm. The limited scope of this encounter – one arm each, so little access – intensifies every move, every sensation. They regain their rhythm now, without urgency. There is pleasure in the assurance of his touch, of her breath. 

Eventually his hand finds the rise of her round hip. Her figure, so powerful against an enemy, is stunningly luscious laid out before him like this. She swirls against him in approval; yes, her body says, that is where I want your hand. Or perhaps not there exactly, it says, pushing against the telltale hardness he is no longer taking pains to conceal. He traces along the deep wrinkle of thick fabric where her hip meets her thigh and is rewarded with a hitch in her breath. Have her legs opened a bare inch? 

Her trousers – jeans, she calls them – are as thick as armor. Surely she can feel nothing through it, at this intersection of reinforced seams. Surely, and yet she purrs at faint pressure. And so he echoes the swirls of her hips with tiny swirls of his finger, to her evident delight. 

It’s much more difficult for her to get at him, but she is determined. She reaches behind her, to the front of his pants. Buttons, folds – this would be much easier if he would just wear those jeans she bought him. She fumbles for a moment at the fastenings, but is distracted by the pressure from behind them. As best she can, she encircles him with her small hand. His breath stops; he freezes. 

“You okay?” she asks, waiting. 

He doesn’t respond immediately, and she’s sure she’s wrecked everything, but then he moves against her, thrusting ever so slightly into her hand. Okay then. They’re going to do this together, this thing she wouldn’t have guessed was a possibility, and they could certainly debate whether it was a good idea, but here they are, hands on each other. Their movements grow more urgent. His breath, on her neck again, is maddeningly soft. He knows what he’s doing, too – jeans or no, he’s got the lay of the land. She opens her legs a little wider, letting her right leg hang over his, which makes room for two more fingers. 

He should have known her small hand would be a strong as the rest of her. Strong and intuitive. Without the benefit of sight, through frustrating layers of fabric, she knows how to hold him. Her hand slides along his length, squeezing in broad strokes, never releasing him. It may well drive him to climax. 

The thought seizes his attention. The brink of climax? What has he done? Is he prepared for the consequences?

He pulls away, sitting up. 

She turns around quickly, a reflex, and sits up to face him. “What is it?” she asks, trying for eye contact. 

Was he honestly on the verge of sacrificing their sacred trust for momentary carnal pleasure? He lifts his hand to his mouth in horror, but her faint scent lingers on his fingers. He shuts his eyes and drops his hand to his lap, where, perhaps even worse, his desire is still more than evident. 

“Oh God,” he mutters, flinging himself from the bed. In one long stride he’s inside the bathroom, the door shut between them. 

Abbie can guess what he’s feeling, because she’s feeling something similar. She had kept herself from kissing him – she knew that would be it, the point of no return, but come on. They passed that point hours ago. Did she really think they could have some sort of adolescent grope session? She wasn’t thinking, that was the problem, and he wasn’t either. And now everything is weird again. 

Clearly Crane thinks it’s his fault. He’s all bound up with chivalry and honor and he would take full responsibility for this if she let him, she knows it. 

She’s not going to let him. She finds a notepad and a dull pencil in the bedside table. 

_This is not only your fault, Crane. It’s mine, too. I’m sorry._

He’s still inside the bathroom, fists pressed to his eyes, when he hears first the engine roar to life, then her tires pull away.


	2. The Evening of Lies and Heated Gazes (or, The Next Time)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things have gone back to normal. Ichabod was saved from being buried alive, again. Abbie escaped from Purgatory. (If you are concerned with how, I encourage you to read She and He by CreepingMuse.) Jenny is feeling better – although she skips physical therapy more often than Abbie would like, but you can't change people. Captain Irving is working with a dedicated and creative lawyer upstate. Everything is just the way it was before.
> 
> Although no one has heard a peep from Katrina or Abraham. And no one has seen Henry. It's been two months.

* * *

Abbie groans as she braces herself against the table. "Is this really necessary?"

"Teeny tiny waist? Boobs on a platter?" Marcus pulls once again, grunting with the effort. "You're lucky I'm letting _you_ wear this."

"Miss Mills?" Crane calls from outside Marcus's workroom door. "The hour is late."

"How'd you do with the jacket?" Marcus volleys back as he ties Abbie into her corset, then begins fastening the line of hooks and eyes down her back.

"Mr. Williams, you are indeed an artist. But lieutenant, please hurry. If Mr. Thiebault is as suspicious as you gather, we ought not draw attention to ourselves."

* * *

Even with Marcus's help it took forever for Abbie to get ready. Underdress, four different muslin skirts, giant side paniers, this rib-cracking corset, heavy violet brocade underskirt, then the ornate golden jacket dress over all of it. Crane's clothes may be fancy, but as least they resemble normal menswear. And weigh less than a hundred pounds.

Driving in her get-up is nearly impossible. The twin paniers – cartoonishly large hoops ballooning out over each hip – are not made for bucket seats. The left one is twisted around so that now it covers most of the side window; the right is flared out over Crane's lap. Abbie has all five skirts hiked up over her bare knees so she can reach the stick shift. Sitting back in the seat is disturbingly constricting, but even with perfect posture everything above the waist is being squished out the top of her corset. Thanks to her old friend Marcus and his warehouse of costumes she could fool anyone into thinking she's a D cup, and every struggling breath just presses the girls further up.

Crane looks good, she has to admit. Better than good. He wears clothes well, even on an ordinary day. He's strong but not brutish, tall but not lanky. He's got the bearing for a velvet vest and a long coat. She finds herself stealing glances while he glares, immovable, at the road.

She really doesn't – can't – care about his reaction to her. They have a job to do. "Look, when we get to the party, you blend in while I find a way upstairs to his office. In and out in ten minutes, tops."

Crane attempts to urge her hoop away from his thigh, but it bounces back, a metal stay flicking his leg with a sharp jolt. "You may find stealth somewhat challenging," he counters. "Perhaps I could -"

She interrupts. "And what are you going to do if your trinket is locked away?"

"It is an _amulet_ , and it's not mine. Yet." He nods toward Abbie without glancing her way. "But as ever, Miss Mills, I defer to your more accomplished delinquency."

* * *

The valet parking attendant, a pimply teenager in sagging tights, watches Abbie as she climbs gymnastically out of her car, fabric and wires tangled around her. Crane, on the other hand, waits until she's straightened her corset and coaxed all of her skirts to lie flat. Then he steps beside her and, out of the blue, holds his elbow out.

Abbie pauses. Avoiding contact, even meaningless contact like this, is what has allowed them to move on. Which he knows, so what is he doing? She thought they were in this together.

She glances toward the door. Every woman, each ornately coiffed and dressed, is being led by the arm by a man, like being helpless enough that you need to be propped up while walking is somehow the height of femininity. Or possibly because none of them can reliably take a full breath.

But she and Crane have to try to blend in, and she's already at a considerable disadvantage. "Yeah, fine," she finally says, bending out her elbow. Crane lifts it gently over his forearm and guides her to the door while she pretends it doesn't shake her.

* * *

From the foyer only one staircase to the upper floors is visible, rising from where a dozen elderly men in familiar dress guffaw and snort like pigs. The women hover in the ballroom to the left, chattering in collections of three or four beside a large, square dance floor. A consort of strings in the far corner underscores their conversation.

Just inside the door, a liveried guard holds out an empty palm. "Invitation," Miss Mills murmurs into Ichabod's shoulder. He slips his fingers inside the breast of his coat and produces the precious piece of paper the lieutenant deployed no small measure of artifice to procure for this exclusive event.

The guard deliberates, squinting at the mismatched couple for longer than should be necessary.

Ichabod stretches to tower over him. "There isn't a problem, is there?"

"No, no problem," the guard agrees, shrinking slightly against the wall. "Go on in."

With a slow, superior nod, Ichabod guides Miss Mills just inside the gilded ballroom, nothing but a deep breath belying his outward serenity.

Miss Mills was right: she is indeed the only woman of color here, from what he can see. She warned him that the party's hosting society continues, centuries on, to exclude descendants of those their ancestors owned. He found it hard to imagine such a wrong-minded practice would persist for centuries and yet the room is uniformly pale, with Miss Mills its only, radiant exception.

He leans to speak into her ear. "You did not exaggerate."

She huffs a joyless laugh. "Told ya."

* * *

Ichabod has become accustomed to Miss Mills' beauty and strength; he no longer allows it to distract him. Her usual costume only fleetingly hints at the gifts Aphrodite has bestowed upon her. But tonight, her stunning gown displays every charming curve, every shadow and swell. What's more, at her friend Mr. Williams' insistence she eschewed a period-appropriate wig, favoring instead what the two of them referred to as _natural_ hair. Left unstraightened, her locks separate into voluptuous curls which she has swept into a twist at the nape of her neck. Tendrils have fought themselves loose; they kiss the tender bend where her shoulder meets her neck, a delicate spot Ichabod knows is particularly sensitive.

Knowledge to which he has no right.

Despite her evident discomfort in such a foreign milieu, Miss Mills' bearing is regal - generated, he is certain, in her abundant personal confidence. Miss Mills shines like the very sun; by comparison, even the most handsome woman in the ballroom resembles a brittle, aging matron.

Over the din, a disembodied voice announces, "Sweet Richard! Take your lines!"

It is a dance Ichabod knows well. He gestures toward the double line forming on the large dance floor. "Would you do me the honor?"

"What? No."

"Dance is one of our greatest social joys, Miss Mills," he insists. After all, to avoid detection they must appear to be invested in the festivities. The uncharitable pleasure he may derive from watching her suffer through the practices of an era two hundred years removed from her own figures not at all.

At her slight hesitation, Ichabod deposits her across from him in a line of women. "Crane!" she hisses through her teeth.

"Follow me. I've got you," he assures her.

Introductory music swells. Ichabod bows, nodding leadingly toward the floor. The women beside Miss Mills curtsey; she bends, still glaring at him.

Under billows of laughter and the strains of the string consort, Ichabod surreptitiously directs her movements. "Left foot, cross. Now right. Two steps in. Circle me. Back." At the outset Miss Mills stumbles, chasing the beat. But the difficulty cannot smudge her radiance. When she turns on the angle, a ringlet of ebony curl dips to stroke her shoulder.

How intimate to glimpse the curl she erases as a lieutenant.

Crane really is in a class all his own. The other men dancing on either side of him are droopy or jagged, so modern and informal it's almost disrespectful. They conspicuously fling their arms and waggle their butts mockingly. Not Crane. He glides forward and back, one arm folded across the front of his waist, the other tucked behind him. His eyes are locked with Abbie's, willing her to keep up.

It gets easier as the dance repeats. Crane's directions drop to a barely audible whisper. When in the third time through the pattern she predicts the next step, he smiles proudly at her accomplishment. She rolls her eyes. "Doesn't mean I'm ever doing this again."

Even so, it's nice to see him in his element. She has some idea how hard it must be for him to always be several steps behind. It's only fair for her to take her turn at it.

As they step back into their lines for a fourth round of the dance, the amplified voice calls out the next one: "Soldier's Joy!" Abbie seizes the opportunity, slipping behind a clutch of women making their way onto the dance floor.

Crane darts to her side.

"I thought you were staying down here," she reminds him.

"Upon further reflection," he counters, "nefarious schemes are best performed with a scout."

The door guards, relaxed now that all guests have been accounted for, hover beside a table of hors d'oeuvres. Abbie slips through the door in a whoosh of fabric. Crane closes it behind them; Abbie is already halfway up the staircase when he turns around.

" _Scout_ ," he hisses. "Do you require a definition?!"

* * *

Abbie tries all of the doors; this one, at the far end of the third floor, is locked.

"Here," she whispers, drawing two pins from her hair.

"Resourceful as ever," Crane muses, bending to scan the hallway.

She picks the lock in moments and immediately steps inside, leaving Crane to keep watch.

It's an office, as she expected, lined with dark wood paneling. Behind an enormous monument of a desk is a wall of bookshelves. In the center of the eye-level shelf, a framed sketch of an old ship is mounted to the wall.

"Hello, safe."

She feels along the right edge of the frame for the release mechanism she knows must be there. And it is.

The safe's lock is harder to pick, but she gets it on her second try. Inside, behind a newish handgun and a stack of stuffed envelopes, sits a tarnished gold cross no bigger than her badge. "Has to be it," Abbie whispers to herself. She replaces her hair pins and stuffs the ancient trinket down between her breasts.

"Was it there?" Crane prods when Abbie closes the office door behind her.

Abbie grins.

"Well, where is it?"

"Safe and sound," she assures him, adjusting the top of her corset. "Now let's get out of here."

* * *

Rene Thiebault, the suspicious host, is waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs.

"Mr. and Mrs. Jefferson," he drones. "What a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

Crane arches an eyebrow at Abbie's joke, naming them this way. She studiously doesn't notice, offering her hand with a broad, staged smile. "Mr. Thiebault."

After a second of hesitation, the host takes it. "Were you lost?" he asks her, bowing to leave a kiss inches above her hand even as he watches her.

Crane steps in, holding his hand out next. "Admiring your impressive art collection here in the staircase. Without permission, I'm afraid."

Thiebault shakes Crane's hand with his thick paw, pumping it as arrogance overtakes his suspicion. "Permission granted, Mr. Jefferson. Imagine, an Oxford historian at our annual ball. You'll pardon the victors a bit of hubris."

 _He doesn't know the half of it_ , Abbie thinks as the man's treasured Moravian Cross pokes her breast.

"Come," Thiebault insists, wrapping his strong, stubby arm around Abbie's back. "The waltzes have just begun."

* * *

Thiebault walks them to middle of the busy dance floor. "The night is only beginning, and I have so many questions for you, Mr. Jefferson. But Cognac and conversation later." He drops a heavy palm on Crane's shoulder, then another on Abbie's, turning them toward each other before he walks away.

"Damnable timing," Crane grumbles.

"Stay cool," Abbie warns him.

Like he's emerging from a daze, Crane notices the swaying, spinning couples surrounding them. "What dance is this?"

"It's a waltz." Now, this is a dance she knows. Not well, but of the few dances she learned in school, this was one she actually liked. Something about the math of two feet working in a triple meter. And the twirling which, with the right partner, can be pretty magical.

Without warning, she puts Crane's left hand behind her waist. Yes, they've been doing so well with no physical contact. But it's how you waltz. And they aren't getting out of here anytime soon, not under Thiebault's hawkish glare.

"I don't - this is not strictly -" He pulls away, lifting his hand off of her.

But she presses it into place and takes his other hand in hers, dropping her right hand lightly on his shoulder. "I've got you," she parrots back to him. "One, and then two little steps." She demonstrates, moving him along with her.

His feet move as instructed, but his body is otherwise rod-straight.

"That's it. One, two, three. One, two, three." She looks up into his face, willing him to follow her lead. "You've got it. Relax."

Ichabod watches her, bewildered. Perhaps it is the sudden loss of their comforting moat that confounds him, what Miss Mills calls _personal space_. No, he is well aware it is the lingering, recently repressed memory of his arm wrapped around her waist, his hand given access it should not have but wants anyway.

The country dance he taught her was so much kinder. It only promised this heady embrace. To have it is almost too much.

As he learns the simple step, Miss Mills releases her lead. A wisp of a smile appears at the corner of her mouth. She leans into his hand at her waist. The weight of her skirts pull at their twirls, deepening each movement. Her gaze floats lightly over the faces around them.

For the moment, spinning here in his arms, she appears content. How rare and beautiful. _This is what dancing is meant for_ , he thinks. _This is what gazing is meant for._

He holds her small hand in his, drawing her ever so gently closer to him, and then closer still. When her bodice presses against his vest her eyes return to his, full of playful mirth. But his are dark with the longing she couldn't see on that fateful night two months ago.

The recognition in her face almost causes Ichabod to let her go. Just under the surface, the same impossible desire is mirrored back to him.

 _You should stop_ , Abbie registers. Eye contact, she knows full well, can be so much more dangerous even than skin on skin. So much more honest, and now she is spilling everything, and so is he without a word. She can't look away. She doesn't want to. The space between their lips is too vast. She recklessly spins in his arms, the force of her skirts and the music and something else, something they share, something they shouldn't binding them together and twirling them around and around each other.

* * *

They stole the Moravian Cross from under the nose of its rightfully paranoid owner. They escaped the evening without harm or censure. Why then does Ichabod feel so entirely gutted? For all their success, he yearns to begin the anesthetizing process of recovery from this evening of lies and heated gazes.

Before Miss Mills has even brought the vehicle to a stop Ichabod engages the door's handle, impatient for her absence. "Goodnight, Miss Mills," he says quietly, lighting on the dirt outside the car.

Abbie turns off the engine. "Wait. I need your help. With the, uh, thing." She indicates her back with a vague gesture.

 _Absolutely not_. He couldn't possibly disrobe her; it would be inappropriate under the most mundane circumstances. All the more after this evening's activities. "Jenny would be a more fitting attendant, wouldn't you agree? Or perhaps Mr. Williams. Not I." He hopes she cannot sense the tremor in his voice.

Miss Mills' shoulders suddenly slump, which serves only to offer up the perfect bosom he has so willfully ignored more completely to his weary yet eager eyes. "Crane. It's two in the morning. I'm not going to wake up Marcus or Jenny at this hour, and I'm really not going to sleep in this torture rig." Were she to look at him, she would see his utter distress. But she refuses. "Please."

He ought to protest: _Miss Mills, when I imagine unfastening your bodice -_ But he cannot bring himself to argue that his desire is too powerfully piqued to taunt himself in such a way. He is a soldier, a married man, and most importantly, _her friend_. "After you," he offers instead, gesturing toward the door.

Abbie'll have to go inside; there's no way he could get at all those little hooks and eyes here in the car. For that and a million other reasons, part of her was hoping he'd stick to his guns. Because as much as she needs his help, this is a very bad idea. It's the first time she's even considered going in Crane's cottage since That Night.

Before Crane's scheme to steal the Moravian Cross, before they played dress up and spent the evening whirling around a dance floor together, everything was fine. Crane was a perfect gentleman from the morning after she sped away. Sure, there were moments she wanted to bring it up, but what would she tell him? That she wished she hadn't left? That wasn't even entirely true, and anyway, he freaked out just as much as she did. No, in the end neither of them ever said a word about it. She was careful not to touch him – she realized in those first few days how often she reached for him – and he seemed to do the same. Pretty soon, they found their groove again.

Until tonight. For her, tonight opened the flood gates. All of the whatever-it-was that came over her That Night has rushed back. So she would have to be certifiable to go in there for the express purpose of him helping her take her clothes off. Right?

* * *

Miss Mills unfastens her gown and drops it over the back of a kitchen chair, exposing her bodice. She stands, as tightly wound as Ichabod obviously is, with her deceptively small back facing him. Again.

A knot of memories surge through his mind: of Abbie under his hands, of reverently unfastening Katrina's bodice on their wedding night, unwrapping her slowly like a gift. He watches his fingers delicately remove hook from eye, first one, then another. To brace the fabric he must reach inside. Her skin is aflame; his is ice.

She hisses at the cold.

"Evening chill," he tries to say, but his voice hitches in his throat. His fingers falter.

Abbie sighs. "I fucking hate this."

"I apologize," he whispers, wilting behind her. "Abbie."

She whips around to face him. "No, okay? We are not doing this. We are not apologizing and we are not taking three steps back and _we are_ _not_ going in that bedroom."

"I wouldn't -"

"You already have and so have I! But not again. You are helping me get this fucking thing off because _you_ wanted some supernatural _trinket_ that you are sure will help us save your _wife_ , who is _alive_. _That_ is why we are here. Not for us. Not for _this_."

"It's an amulet," he argues, his voice pale.

"Seriously?" she counters.

They glare at each other until their frustration cracks and, just as suddenly, falls away. Abbie smiles with relief; she laughs, shaking her head. Crane's smile transforms his face and soon he is laughing, too.

He turns her around and makes quick work of the fastenings, then unties the spiraled lace. "There. No more torture."

Abbie picks up her gown. "Right," she says, her grin dissipating. "Or just a different kind."


	3. Blind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The trinket worked: Abbie and Ichabod recovered Katrina (at which point the damn thing literally melted out of his hand and soaked, like blood, into the ground). Jenny is doing better. Captain Irving's trial is taking forever, and meanwhile the new Captain is a piece of work.
> 
> Ichabod and Abbie still fight the good fight, but the rest of the time Katrina and Ichabod are inseparable. They've set up house in the cottage. She does that thing where she touches him all the damn time.
> 
> She's nice. It's fine.

* * *

Three days, the doctor said, and then Abbie gets to see again. Three days with eyes totally bandaged. Any less and she risks permanent blindness. (Three days _minimum_ , he said, but she is ignoring that last word.)

Jenny volunteered to play nursemaid. First thing she did was stop on the way home from the hospital - left Abbie in the car like a damn pet - and got her a blindfold. Laughed like a loon about it. Hilarious. But it's actually a nice little velvet thing, soft, fastens in the back. It's probably merchandizing crap that came out with that 50 Shades book, but Abbie doesn't even care. It's better than feeling like she's still in the hospital, scraping her fingers against bandage tape again and again.

She can't distract herself, though. Can't read, can't Netflix binge watch. She's stuck seeing the explosion in the tunnel on endless loop. How she pushed Crane behind her to shield him the moment they both heard the sizzle of the burning wick, and then like a dumbass turned her face back just as the dynamite exploded. She sees it billow out at her, red and black and orange and blue. Left her with a few scratches, a wicked sunburn, and a short vacation from sight.

Katrina stopped by her room at the hospital to report that Crane sprained his wrist and has a hairline fracture along his shin. No doubt Katrina is taking excellent care of her husband in their lovely little rustic cottage for two. Jenny says he tried to visit on his way out, but the doctor was in the middle of covering her eyes with gauze.

Jenny sucks at helping. She forgets Abbie can't see and after two days, Abbie's over reminding her. Stop fuming, Jenny tells her. What exactly does Jenny expect Abbie to do instead, mop the damn floor? Repaint the kitchen? Learn to crochet? How about target practice, a little research, even some paperwork?

Jenny has no idea how to assist a blind person but in her defense, Abbie sucks at being a blind person, so they're a pair. And now that Jenny's getting bored, she keeps inventing reasons to go out and leave Abbie here, alone.

Twelve steps to the bathroom. Eight steps to the kitchen. Twenty two hours until this is over.

It's true, turns out, that when one of your senses goes to shit, the others get sharper. It happens pretty quickly. So Abbie hears footsteps outside before the gentle, somehow apologetic knock on the door. "Miss Mills?"

Huh. The cute couple, probably with a basket of muffins she won't be able to find in her kitchen once they finally leave. "Door's open, I think."

Abbie hears the squeal of the hinges – how did she never notice how noisy they were before these last few days? – and then two footfalls. Just him. Huh.

"Are you in pain?" Ichabod asks, his voice low and serious.

Abbie shakes her head. "Nope, you?"

Crane's exhalation is its own answer, but he continues. "I have of late become enamored of Advil. Truly marvelous, your many anesthetics." Yeah. What must it have been like to be wounded when he was a soldier? Abbie doesn't want to think about it, but now, with nothing else to see, it spools out like a movie: festering wounds, amputations… "Miss Jenny tells me the bandages will be removed tomorrow?"

The revelation is a small, annoying stab. "You've been talking to Jenny?"

"Exchanging text messages, to be exact."

"Well, aren't you tech savvy," she teases. It comes out harsher than she meant it to, but she leaves it there. So hard to judge social interaction without functioning eyeballs.

He overlooks her gentle dig, earnest as the family dog. "I hoped for news of your health but when I called, I was taunted endlessly by your invitation to leave a voice mail."

It's this, the way he means well, that begins to soften her. "I turned my phone off at the hospital," she starts to explain.

"Your injuries are my fault. If I hadn't -"

Abbie interrupts, unwilling to let him take this on. "Nope. Nothing happened that I wouldn't do again in a heartbeat. Except for turning back around. I wouldn't mind a second shot at that."

"I should have shielded you from the blaze."

She shakes her head. "Then you'd be watching the inside of your face instead of me. And how's that fair? Today, my injuries suck worse than yours. Tomorrow, it will be the other way around. I mean, I'm oh-for-two for digging out of a grave with nothing but my fingernails, so."

"Well," Crane says, still stubbornly hoarding the blame.

They could spar over this for hours. "So where's the missus?" Abbie jabs instead. She's gotten so used to Katrina draped at Crane's side, stroking his forearm, petting his shoulder, a sour smile plastered on her face. It almost feels weird that she's not here. Almost.

She can just about hear his face go blank with uncertainty. "She asked to come along, but I thought…"

"Yeah, no, it's good." At least he knows that much, that at her most vulnerable she'd hate to have visitors. Especially Katrina. Not that she's not a nice person. She is: extremely nice, way too nice, irritatingly nice.

"And, selfishly, I wanted you all to myself."

Abbie's breath stops. What the hell does that mean? For the first time since the accident, she seriously considers tearing her bandages off early. If she could see his face, she'd know right away how to take that. It's such an intimate thing to say, but they are different now, since Katrina came back. Meticulously platonic. No wanting what she cannot have. (Almost none.) And obviously he's been otherwise occupied, with Sugar and Spice at his beck and call. So he can't mean what her suddenly twisting guts hope he means. Because guts are idiots that jump to stupid conclusions.

Before she can exhale, Abbie hears the creak of a cane, then a heavy step toward her. "And to that end, I come bearing gifts."

Still stuck, she lunges for the kinds of light quips they once shared. "Art supplies? Crossword puzzles?" It's too jagged. She's been failing at this sort of thing for months now.

"A book."

"Now, that's just mean."

"How little you esteem my intentions." A few more hobbling steps and the couch shifts under his weight. "I shall read. You need only listen."

The offer immediately sets her on edge. "Uh, I don't think so."

"Whyever not? You are temporarily without vision, and I have -"

"Because it's weird," she interrupts. This can't happen. There is peril down this road. Unpredictable intimacy. Variables she can't account for.

"It's not. How is it weird?"

He has to be taking up his entire half of the couch plus most of Abbie's. As far as she's concerned, the couch has shrunk to the size of a narrow ottoman. Abbie scooches up against the armrest. She scrambles for an excuse to turn him down; she absolutely cannot use _it could lead to groping_. "Look, I'm not a child," she tells him. "I can read for myself. Usually."

"Are children the only happy beneficiaries of the well-spoken book? In my time, friends and family often read to each other of a fine evening. If I may boast, my dramatic readings of the newest tales or poetry did garner praise. I promise not to disappoint."

"I'm just." _It could lead to groping._ "Not really in the mood."

Abbie hears the fabric of Crane's great coat rustle. What she really needs to hear is the sound of him leaving.

"But thanks anyway."

Crisp pages flip beside her. Crane clears his throat. "I dismiss your rejection on the grounds that it is born of inexperience. Further, I forgive you for being cantankerous. Impatience and melancholia are not uncommon in the recuperating invalid."

Abbie laughs in spite of herself. It's a bit hollow, but it lifts a weight. "Gee, thanks."

"Ovid," he announces, "in Sir Samuel Garth's poetic translation."

And he's back, Professor Crane, bringing the boring since 1750. "How 'bout we just talk?"

Miss Mills turns to him, squaring her slight shoulders in his direction for the first time since he stepped inside her close rooms. How is it that, without sight, she appears so much smaller? Ichabod has grown accustomed to the way her presence expands to fill every inch of space. He wonders if she has any notion of this effect.

Talking freely would be unwise. _Talking_ is exactly what they have avoided since they found Katrina. Since Miss Mills found Katrina, if he's honest. For it is she who supplied the ambition, the drive to see the plan through, she who pushed him, oblivious to the conflict brewing beneath his industrious facade. How could he feel this – this spark, this longing – for another, when his faithful wife languished behind a demonic veil?

Once they procured the amulet, he had above all required time to think. But Miss Mills was relentless, and how could he ask her to pause? How could he explain himself? _Please, Miss Mills, if you would wait a few months and also please kiss me once or twice so I could decide whether to abandon my wife whose only hope for rescue is me?_ Preposterous. In the end, he let the rescue unfold, torn but grateful.

And then, as he feared, Miss Mills drifted from him. Katrina required his instruction, care, and above all reassurance, and Miss Mills soon became more independent even than when they first met. Certainly she was at her most scrupulously circumspect. The two witnesses spoke only of their mission or of her work at the precinct. The few mentions Ichabod made of his wife caused palpable tension between them. Katrina attempted to reach out to Miss Mills, her generous heart brimming with gratitude. But for every meal the three of them enjoyed together, Ichabod refused a dozen. Spooning soup to his lips while seated between them, making inevitably stilted conversation, was nearly intolerable.

No, Ichabod suspects _just talking_ could only lead to complication, which is why he has brought a safe, predetermined script for their time alone. "I assure you, Ovid's stories will be a balm for you during this trying interval."

Crane isn't budging and, as ornery as she could be if she let herself, she'd rather not hurt his feelings. "I bet. Fine, go ahead."

Ichabod clears his throat and begins. "Of bodies changed to various forms, I sing…" The words are familiar on his tongue. As he reads the elegant English, he recalls stammering through the original Latin while still a child in his father's study. _Savor it_ , his father insisted. _This is the world's most precious poetry._

Ovid recounts the creation of the world, the transformation of dirt and light into paradise and love. Ichabod wants to interject comments on the nuance of the translation, the influence of the crown on even the most innocent word choice. But it is more pressing to lull her from resistance to ease with the inevitable rise and fall of Garth's iambic pentameter. And so he reads on.

Crane's voice isn't bad on its own, when he's not warning her of something coming or shouting instructions across the field of a fight or complaining about how the founding fathers didn't mean for everything to go to shit this way. No, his voice is good. Good for reading. When he's speaking nearly meaningless words in a regular rhythm, it goes low and warm. Like a caress.

And now, surrounded by his ardent baritone, her mind veers exactly in the direction it is not supposed to go, imagining it closer, just this side of a whisper. She can almost feel his breath against her ear, his arms sliding around her waist, his hands spread wide to anchor her against him. The words make no difference, and she's not following them anyway because that voice, amber and now nearly boiling, has her sinking into a full blown fantasy in which Crane is removing her clothes. Slowly. While speaking. His lips hover beside her ear, brushing it, tickling it with T and P and F as his hands, his very good hands slide up under her shirt, down her jeans, exactly and immediately where they are needed most. His voice teases but his hands are all business…

Until she feels his very real hand on her knee, hot and tentative. "Miss Mills, is something wrong?"

Her knee is bouncing a mile a minute.

And dammit, his hand on her actual jeans, alone with him here in a cocoon of darkness, sends her mind right back to their night together in the cabin, lying curved against him, his one free hand breathtakingly wise. She freezes under his palm. "What? Um."

Ichabod does not lift his hand. Instead he stares at the fabric beneath it. The sensation of the worn weave under his fingertips launches him back to the cabin. His fingers curve to encase her knee. They find the seam, bent and strained along the outer edge of her leg, and now he can think of nothing but another seam once under his fingertips.

Ovid, forgotten, falls to the cushion, then the floor.

"You okay?" Abbie startles at the noise. "Was that the book?"

Crane takes a deep breath but doesn't lift his hand. "It was."

"What, no more story time?" She did not mean for it to come out so nakedly intimate.

He doesn't answer right away and though she doesn't want to spook him, she can't help herself. She hovers her own hand above the back of his, feeling the warmth grow between them.

He stretches his long fingers out and up, capturing the tips of her fingers between his own and drawing them down into his palm. He clutches her hand with an intensity that surprises them both.

"Abbie."

"Don't," she says. But she doesn't pull her hand away.

His mind grapples – _what does she mean me not to do?_ – but the confusion is gone almost before it registers. She tightens her grip on his hand and he knows. _Don't let go._

They sit, side by side, hands bound by fervent agreement. Ichabod, silently desperate to remain in this hopeful uncertainty as long as he can, finds himself turning, sliding his other hand between her hair and her neck, to pull her –

She feels the couch shift with his weight, then his fingertips in her hair. She leans deliberately away from them. "You're married. We are not doing this."

"Abbie, please –"

"We're not." Still, her grip on Crane's hand is fierce.

His free, nearly adulterous hand falls to his lap. "What would you have me do? Direct me, I beg you. I cannot trust my own self."

She shakes her head, stunned by the sudden shock of finally addressing this after so long. "The blind leading the blind," she murmurs at their clasped hands.

"Do not think to distract me with cleverness. I am earnest." They are both speaking so softly that a person standing three feet away might not hear them.

"So am I." She lets go then, smoothing her palm over the back of his hand, sensitizing every inch of skin. "Okay, rules then. You can't touch me. I can't handle – you just can't."

But she strokes his hand with her fingertips anyway, gently scratching spirals with her nails into the hair at his wrist. His breath trembles.

"You can't have me all to yourself. Can't even _want_ to have me all to yourself."

His lips fall open to protest, but Ichabod steadies himself. "If you do not share my -"

"Of course I share it," she confesses. Then, more gently: "That's what the rules are for."

"And yet the rules as stated only pertain to me." The strain is too great to resist his natural impertinence. "What rules shall you obey?"

"Absolutely no time alone with you. Obviously." Abbie lifts his hand, heavy but pliant, and turns it palm side up, then threads her fingers between his. She doesn't hold his hand now, just slips her skin along his, back and forth in long, hypnotic strokes. "Can't let you read to me like that again, ever."

It is such a relief to say these things out loud that she ignores the alarm warning her to shut the fuck up. "I can't let myself imagine your touch at the nape of my neck," she goes on, reckless, glad she can't see his reaction. "Or what your lips feel like. What it would be like to have you hold me, to have you under me. How you would arch up to meet me. What you sound like when you come."

Crane is breathless. "Continue and I'll show you here and now."

She laughs, too loud, and clutches his hand. "That escalated quickly."

He could kiss her. Now. He could do it; the shallow tremors of her breath betray her longing as clearly as her rules do. He could slip his fingers around the nape of her neck just as she desires, press his lips to hers until her head fell back into his palm.

And what, finally, will come of it? After they are both drowsily sated – what happens then?

The couch shifts as Crane's weight leans away from Abbie. She hears him lift his book from the floor.

"Are you leaving?"

"I must," he returns, the words thick with guilt.

"I shouldn't have said… what I said. I'm sorry, it was. I just." What can she possibly say? She knew what she was doing. And he was too kind to stop her. Too kind, or too horrified.

He stands, leaning into the creak of his cane. Abbie feels his absence like a chill. "It's nothing I haven't contemplated myself," he reminds her, but he's still leaving.

She hears the doorknob click and twist, the hinges whine, and the whole fucked up situation explodes inside her gut. She takes two desperate steps into the empty chasm between the couch and the door. "Goddamnit. It's just your dumb body wanting to fuck and my dumb body being totally up for it. It's just sex, Crane. It shouldn't tear us apart."

His voice is a million miles away. "Is it just that? Is it not also your heart, given almost without your consent? My body would eagerly follow, 'tis true, but Abbie: it is my heart that longs for you. My wretched heart, entrusted with the greatest riches yet greedily hungering for more."

And then he's gone, and Abbie listens to every footstep until there's nothing more to hear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Your Herculean feats of patience are much appreciated, gentle readers. And special thanks to CreepingMuse, who has kindly but firmly insisted I write more of this painful fic.


	4. You Can't Always Get What You Want

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fantasy is the last refuge of the frustrated. And don't we all know it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few adjustments to canon before we proceed: let’s pretend Hawley is still here, is NOT a colossal dickface, and was never embroiled in a poorly-defined series of hookups with Jenny. Since the show has removed every single available man for Abbie, we must make do. Let’s pretend that little spark of interest he showed in Abbie grew and grew and, since in our world he wasn't a selfish, immoral asshat who was fucking her sister, she finally agreed to a drink with him. Anything to get Crane off her mind.

 

**_This is not the first time Ichabod has found himself outside Miss Mills’ apartment, out of his mind with yearning._ **

But this is the first time he has stayed so long, the first time desperation has won out over shame and respect for his partner. This is the first time his legs did not lead him, overcome with self-loathing, back through the forested night to his cottage.

He came here the day they rescued Katrina. A coward to beg for Miss Mills’ love, but as much a coward to retreat to his wife’s side once again, his plea left unspoken. Katrina woke when he returned to the cottage; he made a poor excuse but she believed him.

He still cared for her. But not enough. Not enough to withstand her lies.

Not enough to prevent everything from being brighter, more saturated with color, with scent, more sumptuous and meaningful when Abbie is with him.

Abbie, not Miss Mills. In his mind, she is only ever Abbie now. Abbie: her name is a plea, a groan.

Betraying Katrina was once the line he would not cross. Not anymore. He sees his marriage clearly now for the forced, brittle thing it is. Katrina seemed pleasant once, mild, the very picture of the bride he wanted. But he knows better now. Beneath her secrets and deceit, she shares only a glimpse of herself. Perhaps that is all there is.

He believed their love timeless, but now, here, he knows what timeless love feels like. He knows what it is to love through to your bones, to need with every fibre and knot in you.

And in the face of this truth, Ichabod has no tether, no external restraint.

He would recognize Abbie’s step, the weight of her footfall anywhere. Quiet, now louder. Unmistakable. He stands straighter, stares helplessly at where the front stairwell opens onto the hallway.

She cants her head when she sees him. “This a stakeout?” she asks, flip at first, but underneath there is an ember that hasn’t gone out for months now. It burns their every conversation.

He should leave, for both their sakes. But he is cemented to the spot.

She stands just beside him to unlock her door. “Crane. What’s wrong?”

“Please forgive the intrusion. We must speak,” Ichabod tells her, strained as catgut on a viol.

“At 10:30?”

He is holding onto himself by the thinnest of threads. “Yes.”

She opens the door and he follows her inside. Keys on the counter, gun, badge, wallet beside them, jacket off and over the back of a chair. Her extensive armor takes long moments to shed. Ichabod is pacing.

“What’s going on?” she asks.

“I am no saint.”

He darts a look at her; her eyebrows rise in question. He resumes winding back and forth in front of her couch.

“I am a soldier, an erstwhile scholar, a spy. I may have been chosen to be a Witness, but it was not, I am certain, for my nearness to divinity.”

Abbie folds her arms. “What did you do?”

“Nothing yet. Nothing and everything.”

“Crane.” She has only so much patience. He must out with it or leave.

“I have been silent, circumspect. Well-behaved.” The words come out almost a snarl. “I have stayed away from you as you asked. I have stood by and let that wart of a man ogle you. I have been faithful.”

“You have.”

“But not in my heart!” It comes crashing over him, finally, and he lets it go, all of it, like a flood over them both. “In my heart, in my mind, you haven’t an inkling how I long for you! How many times, how many ways have I kissed your lips, have I replayed every second I held you in my arms?”

She doesn’t speak, doesn't even seem to breathe.

“Your every touch _means something_ to me.”

He clenches his fists at his sides, lets his eyelids drift closed with a deep breath, anything to clear his head, but when he opens his eyes, everything is her.

“That first night. Your body under my hand. Why did I hesitate? God, if I only had one night to live again, give me _that night_. Give me that night once more, to lay your body bare, worship you, memorize every line. Every curve.” His voice breaks with longing, the last word a whimper.

“You’re gonna make yourself crazy,” she warns him with a voice lighter than fog.

He stops in front of her, faces her. “Abbie, please.”

Her breath hitches. Her eyes glisten with unspent tears.

“I thought I knew what it was to love, but that anemic regard pales beside _this_.” Ichabod crashes to his knees. “I am yours.”

She hesitates only a moment before she brushes her hand over his hair like a benediction and then, turning his face up with sure fingers, presses her lips to his.

**_This is not the first time he has found himself outside Miss Mills' apartment, out of his mind with yearning. Nor is it the first time he escapes down the back stairs before she returns, the truth still unsaid, still stale and unwelcome in his mouth._ **

* * *

 

**_In the stairwell up to her apartment, Abbie imagines Crane waiting for her. He won’t be there: she’s given explicit instructions never to be alone with her._ **

Every second of Nick’s kiss, she wished it was Crane. His warm body, his beard scraping her cheek, his hands splayed wide across her back were Crane’s warmth, Crane’s beard, Crane’s hands, so much bigger than Nick’s and so much stronger. She kept her eyes closed after she pulled away, just to make the fantasy last that much longer.

Abbie wants Crane to be there waiting for her so bad she can almost taste it.

Impossibly, he is. He faces her, hands twisted into claws, his body straight as a rail.

“Were you with him?” he demands.

She huffs a laugh to herself; she barely was. But instead of giving him the lie-stained truth, she turns it around on him. “What are you doing here?”

His brow furrows. The two of them, hopeless and wrecked.

She unlocks the door. Crane doesn’t move. “Want a drink?” she asks when he doesn’t answer her first question, then goes inside. He follows, pulling the door closed behind him.

“Were you? Were you with him?” he asks again, softer this time. She can hear how much it hurts him to ask.

“Not that it’s your business, but.” She can’t look at him. “Depends on what you mean by _with_.”

“Do not play games with me,” he pleads.

She whirls around, throwing her jacket to the floor. “Yes, okay? Yes, I was with Nick. And you,” she says, “you do not get to be jealous! You have a wife! She may be shady as hell, but she is your wife and I know that means something to you.”

“You don’t. You don’t know.”

“Goddamn it, _you are taken_! I don’t get to have you so yes, I’m flagrantly using Nick and maybe that makes me a terrible person. He may look like an overgrown teenager but he is something and right now? I need something. Because if I don’t get you out of my head... We have a seven year contract and I can’t live like this.”

“Abbie,” he begins, but there is nothing he can say that will make it not true.

“Don’t _Abbie_ me. You are off limits. And fuck it, I can’t even distract myself with Nick!” And now she’s too incensed to hold back the truth. “He kissed me tonight.”

Crane looks like she slapped him across the face. On some level, she’s angry enough that she's glad it hurts. But more than him, she’s angry at herself.

“But what makes it so much worse is that, in my mind, it was you. _I was kissing you_. I let him think I was there for it when I just wanted him to be _you_ holding me, your hands, your mouth --”

In one move, Crane cups her face in his hands and kisses her, finally, kisses her exactly like she’s known he would kiss her and being angry doesn’t matter anymore.

**_In the stairwell up to her apartment, Abbie imagines Crane waiting outside her door. But when she reaches her hallway, she is alone. Just like she asked._ **

* * *

 

**_Katrina steals back into their silent cottage like a thief in the night. Ichabod feigns sleep rather than confront her. He is far too distracted._ **

The squeal of the thick wood slats in the entry are the first to betray her. He hears a tittling breath, the lightest laugh and can imagine her face, eyes closing, one eyebrow wisely raised and that knowing grin he adores.

There is a rustle in the kitchen, the dull rub of leather against leather, the muffled jingle of her keys placed on the table. One boot removed, then the other. She moves so gracefully that every step yields only a hint of noise, a rush of fabric. He listens to her tiptoe through the sitting room and then the bedroom threshold.

“I know you’re awake,” comes Abbie’s tantalizing whisper, her lips poised just over his.

He could parry with a witty rejoinder, yes, but he wants nothing in the world as desperately as her lips. Eyes still shut, he stretches himself the inch that separates them to capture her mouth with his own. Her kiss is sublime, precious and tender and generous, a perfect thing. He savors her there until it occurs to him that he might play, that it is only a matter of physics to pull her down onto him, of turning slightly, tugging her toward the center of the bed to frustrate her balance. Ah, and he is rewarded with another delicious giggle as she falls.

“You’re here,” Ichabod marvels.

She lays one small, cool hand on his bare chest. “I see you were expecting me.”

Like an adolescent, his moods swing precipitously from earnest to playful to heartstruck again. “In my wildest fantasies, I never once expected _this_.”

A pale slice of moon casts the only light upon Abbie’s face. It brushes blue across her cheekbones, her neck, and now the smooth skin of her shoulder as she eases it from inside her shirt. Her skin warms against his palm. She kneels to shed her clothing and he traces every curve in its wake until she slips under the blanket, uninterrupted expanse of hungry skin against skin.

His greedy fingers cup the weight of her breast, the plane of her belly, the swell of her hips. She opens her mouth beneath his, licking at the tip of his tongue just as he urges her legs apart.

**_Katrina steals back into their silent, midnight cottage like a thief. Ichabod feigns sleep._ **

* * *

 

**_Crane drops his crossbow on the heavy table with a flash of pride. These are the hardest times for Abbie, high on victory and amped to the gills. These are the times when she can barely contain herself._ **

“We prevail once again,” Crane declares into the echoing silence of the archive.

Abbie grins at him, still thrumming with adrenaline.

He meets her excited gaze with a sparkling eye. He lifts an eyebrow and shrugs his coat from his shoulders.

Abbie has gotten used to the coat. Can’t imagine him without it now.

Now the tie at his throat. With practiced fingers (long, talented fingers) he unties it, then crosses his arms over his body to tug it from his trousers and, in one fluid movement, over his head and off.

“Here?” Abbie asks, teasing. “In the archive?”

With one short stride he’s pushing her jacket off her shoulders by the leather lapels. “Here,” he answers. He takes a blanket from the desk chair and drops it at their feet. “Patience is not a virtue I possess.” He bends to nibble at her earlobe and, as if to prove the point, unfastens her jeans at the same time.

Abbie laughs. “You’re better than me. I almost nailed you against a tree when you made that last shot tonight.”

Crane gives a slow groan, slipping his slim hand inside her waistband, gripping her ass. “Next time. Promise?”

And then, as so often happens with them now, they engulf themselves in a whirlwind of hands and clothes and mouths until, fevered and bare, they pause to savor lips on skin.

Tonight, Abbie presses Crane back on the blanket. She is ready, has been ready for hours, to sink down onto him and ride him like a jockey but he pulls her hips higher (he is stronger than he looks), up over his belly, over his chest with a hungry groan and then, yes, holds her above his mouth. Oh and now, now she sinks down.

**_Crane drops his crossbow on the heavy table with a flash of pride. These are the hardest times, high on victory and amped to the gills. These are the times when she can barely contain herself. “See you tomorrow,” she calls back, already out the door._ **

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note to my exquisitely patient readers: I am sorry. I am so, so sorry I left you high and dry. 
> 
> Sometimes when a show goes sideways, fanfic writers get riled up. They write more, loads more, giant piles of What If and Fix It Fic and AU. Certainly that is how I have felt in the past, and thank heaven for all the gifted writers who responded that way to this season of Sleepy Hollow. But something about the way Crane was written – dopily listening to his crapstorm of a wife and in so doing, putting Abbie in danger (not to mention ignoring her and taking her for granted) – well, I got turned right off. Couldn’t muster a sentence about Abbie wanting anything but Crane’s absence, to be honest. I’m still not back exactly, but this last ep made a slight difference.
> 
> Anyway, this? It’s not resolution. It’s not anything when you get right down to it, just two frustrated people and their unfulfilled fantasies. But sometimes that’s all we have.


	5. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And when there's no one left to fight, they go home. Together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the end, they fight for the ones they love and the ones they’ve lost. They tear victory from the hands of those they once trusted.
> 
> In the end, it all comes down to Abbie and Ichabod.

Abbie climbs behind the wheel. Her shoulders are concrete, her lungs ache. She drops her blood-smeared hands into her lap, too stunned to move, let alone turn the car on.

Crane slides in next to her. He hunches forward in his seat, sucking in a deep breath.

She wonders how she’s going to clean all of this blood out of the upholstery. She wonders if it really is over.

“Are you too weary to drive? May I assist?” Crane asks without lifting his head.

She wonders why they haven’t invented beaming yet. She’s pretty sure Star Trek was onto something.

“Nah, I’m okay.” Her keys are slick with demon blood. Maybe her blood too, a little. She turns the key in the ignition. “You hurt?”

Crane leans slowly back into the bucket seat with a heavy sigh. “I believe I emerged unscathed.”

“On the outside.”

“Quite so.”

She steals a glance at him. One cheek bears the bloody outline of clutching fingers. His coat is drenched with blackening red. His shirt and trousers are splattered with gore. And over everything is a caking veil of soot from the fire.

Ichabod kept his exhaustion at bay over the long months of fighting Katrina, Henry, and Irving, so as to be the effective, supportive partner the lieutenant deserved. He mustered strength to fight them and their demonic minions when dusk fell and for the interminable hours that followed. Now, ocean-deep weariness has overtaken them both with a vengeance.

She drives the familiar back roads to Corbin’s forest retreat, what became their headquarters after a bomb – they suspect planted by Irving – destroyed the archive. Their considerably smaller collection of books and maps crowd the kitchen and sitting room. Miss Mills sometimes falls asleep in the armchair, a heavy book in her lap, when their planning sessions stretch into the wee hours, just as slumber often crept upon him in their subterranean haven.

She pulls up beside the cottage and swings the driver’s side door wide, but emerges slowly. Ichabod peers into the woods that surround the cottage before he unlocks the door, wary even now.

“Nobody left to jump us,” she reminds him, then asks, “you want the shower first?” She grabs her satchel of clean clothes but waits outside the bathroom.

“Be my guest,” Ichabod offers, bowing his head.

He has come to cherish the sounds of her presence here: the squeak of the knob that turns the shower on, the squeal of the metal curtain rings against the bar when she whisks it aside, then again when she draws it closed. The clink of glasses, plates in the kitchen. Her footfall, her laugh, her tuneful hum. She fills the place with life.

He folds his coat over the back of a kitchen chair. It is no more than a blood-soaked woolen sponge now, nearly beyond saving. Glimpses of the final battle flash across his mind. Slicing his heavy axe through demon after demon. Irving’s face as the lieutenant’s bullet pierced his back and the bloody rose bloomed on his chest. His face unrecognizable, a mask of rage and hate. And the lieutenant’s regret, a dozen yards behind him, as she lowered her discharged pistol.

Tea. He will make her a soothing cup of tea.

Abbie turns the water as hot as it will go and lets it run over her skin. She sends up a little prayer of thanks to Corbin for putting in this torture device of a shower nozzle. The scalding spray could peel paint, sure, but it melts the tension in her shoulders and washes away the blood clots and fluid, dried to the consistency of snot. The last remnants of the dead.

Even after hard scrubbing, some things will stay. This cut across her chest, just under her collarbone, deeper than she realized it was and still leaking blood, isn’t going anywhere. And no matter how hot the water is, how much soap she lathers, she doubts she’ll ever wash away the sight of Irving falling to his knees from her gunshot. It can’t remove the memory of blood boiling in her veins when she repeated the words from Grace’s journal, the roar in her ears when her incantation filled Katrina’s magic shield with fire. Still she rubs the soapy washcloth over her skin again and again, squeezing it out and reloading it with fresh suds, until the water runs off her clear.

Her towel hangs beside Crane’s – her towel, because yeah, she’s been here frequently enough and for long enough at a stretch to bring some of her things, to use the shower. True, it’s their base of operations. But how long has it been since they’ve made the cottage a home?

Has she ever been this tired before?

She’ll stay the night, couldn’t drive if she wanted to, so she takes her time. She blots the wound on her chest with toilet paper, spreads moisturizer over her legs and arms, works conditioner through her hair. She puts on the last clean clothes in her bag: a stretchy yoga camisole, a hoodie, a pair of sweats that once were Jenny’s. There’s a plastic bag under the sink; she wads her battle clothes into a heap and stuffs them into it.

When she opens the door, Crane holds a mug out to her. “Chamomile tea. Spoonful of honey.”

His hands are freshly washed, but the rest of him is just as filthy as it was when they walked in. He didn’t even stop to change, just got to work making her feel better. “Smells good, thank you. And look at you, still in your… Go get clean.”

It strikes him again how kind she is, even now, weary to her bones. Not that anyone else could see her exhaustion. She may glow fresh and bright from her bath but around her eyes he can see the slump in her shoulders, the ache she is too fatigued to hide. The wound –

“You’re hurt!”

“It’s fine.”

“Let me dress it. I insist.”

“Yeah, I’m going to let you near me covered in demon guts and forest rot. How about you take a shower first?”

She is right, of course. He has come to realize how rarely she is wrong. “Of course,” he agrees, offering her the heavy flagon of tea she prefers to the delicate demitasse and saucer he chooses for himself.

The bathroom is still humid from her shower, the mirror still opaque with steam. The scent of her skin cream, lavender with an undertone of amber, fills the small space. He has grown accustomed to the way it settles him.

Her soiled clothes peek out of an open plastic garbage sack in the corner. Waiting, he assumes, for his to join them. He bristles at the thought that he might discard a perfectly good, if soiled, shirt and trousers. Even if his coat is irretrievably ruined, surely he can salvage some scrap of fabric from the evening’s carnage. No, dedicated laundering is all his garments require, as do her shirt and jeans. He stuffs his clothes into the bag and deposits the whole gruesome collection in the bottom of the linen closet. When he has a spare moment. Tomorrow, perhaps.

The shower is hot and strong. He lets the water run over him, scalding his skin.

It is over. He whispers it to himself as if to test the words’ credibility. _It is over_.

He lathers soap around his neck, over his face, scrubbing leaves and small twigs out of his hair and beard. He scrapes at dried mud and blood with his fingernails. He scrapes harder when the memories throb at him of Katrina’s face, wide eyes glaring, as their flame ignited the edge of her protective cupola, a magical shield she powered by will and a steady drip of her blood. He can still see Henry burning beside inside a dome of fire, burning like paper in flames until all that remained were cinders and soot. The very soot now rinsing from his skin, pooling with dirt and grime and sweat at his feet.

They were intractably villainous, Katrina and Henry. He reminds himself that they were immune to redemption. Eager for power, for evil, for mindless soldiers like the witnesses’ erstwhile ally Irving. It was, in the end, their duty to prevent this march of destruction. Still, their victory has left a dull ache in his heart he suspects may never cease.

Crane comes out of the bathroom in a loose gray cotton t-shirt and plaid fleece pajama bottoms, both presents from Jenny. Abbie gets such a kick out of seeing him in them, so uncharacteristically relaxed. She can’t get over how he pets the fleece when he thinks.

He’s holding the first aid kit she bought after they discovered Corbin wasn’t much for stocking supplies.

“Better, right?” she asks, and takes a swig from a bottle of porter left over from last night’s strategy session.

“Considerably.”

“Thanks. For the tea. I just needed something stronger.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Please tell me there are more where that came from.”

Abbie nods at the counter, where the last bottle from the six pack is opened and waiting for him.

“To vanquishing our enemies,” he toasts, then drinks like a man in the desert, as if he hasn’t touched water in days. The bottle is nearly empty when he puts it back down.

“Yup. Nobody wants to kill us.”

“Not that we know of.” Crane drains the rest of his porter, closing his eyes to savor it the way he always does, the way that just kills her.

He sets the empty bottle on the counter and then kneels in front of her. Sitting back on his haunches, he lays out gauze, tape, scissors, and a half-gone tube of Neosporin. His movements are as precise as a surgeon. Abbie stifles a grin. “This may smart a bit,” he warns, ripping open what looks like a wet wipe.

She blinks slowly in response. She can’t help but remember cleaning his gash, not six feet from where she sits, That Night. It seems like decades ago.

He opens her hoodie wider over her chest, lifting the fabric with tender precision, and hisses at the extent of the cut.

“Looks worse than it is,” Abbie reassures him.

They aren’t wet wipes, they’re _alcohol_ wipes, and they sting like a motherfucker. She catches the apologetic grimace that comes over him when she can’t help but cringe.

She has to admit, she lucked out. Of the people in this world, she gets Crane on her team.

Ichabod. She gets _Ichabod_ , a man with a heart the size of a small country, fiercely protective of her but always, always respectful of her skill. A real partner. Sure, there have been ups and downs. Tension. Push and pull. But he is intelligent and moral and kind. And patient – with the long fight they’ve waged. And patient with her.

He carefully smears Neosporin, his go-to favorite modern medical invention, over her broken skin, smoothing together the torn edges as if the ointment itself could join them again. When he’s built up a layer of the sticky goop, he covers it with a rectangle of gauze and tapes it down. He traces the outline with tensed fingers to secure the dressing, softening the corners. Once more, then again for good measure. Reverent. That’s how he is with her.

“Thank you,” she tells him, almost in a whisper, “Ichabod.”

His eyes flicker to hers, crinkling toward a smile, and just as quickly dart away. His breath stops, and then his fingers drift from the safe island of tape and gauze. They brush her collarbone. His thumb feathers over the pulse point at the base of her neck and he exhales a fluttering breath.

He touches her like she’s made of the thinnest glass. It breaks and warms her heart at the same time. She’s held back with him, closed herself off from him, but she doesn’t have to anymore. She doesn’t want to anymore. She covers his right hand with her left, holding it there against her skin. With her other hand, she brushes his wet hair from his forehead, threading it behind his ear, and lays her palm on his neck, just under his ear. He looks in her eyes and she opens her legs, drawing him just a bit closer, easing him up to his full kneeling height, taller than she is seated in her chair. Her eyes follow his lips.

“Are you certain this is what you want?” he asks her in a breathy rush. His other hand hovers, trembling, over her thigh. “This must surely be a point of no return for us.”

She breathes a laugh. “I think we passed that a long time ago.”

Ichabod’s head swims to be so close to her, here between her thighs, on the precipice of her kiss. To know that her desire for him still burns. To watch her lips curl into a wise smile, lips he has imagined in countless fantastical dreams.

The breathless moment seems to loom in the distance until suddenly she closes the space between them, pressing her lips to his for a trembling, desperate second before she pulls away. It is over almost before it began.

“You okay?” Abbie whispers, her eyes bright.

He seizes her lips by way of answer, crushing her against him with a hungry groan. A taste is nothing like enough. No, he licks her lips open, sucks at her upper lip, skates his tongue over the ridge of her teeth as they discover the ways their mouths fit together. She winds her arms around his waist, under the hem of his shirt. Her hands, cool from the bottle and the chilly air, open out over his skin, fingertips pressing him back against her.

She’s not careful with him, can’t be after wanting him for so long. When his hands cup her face and he kisses her like he’s drinking from a goblet, thirstily drinking her kisses down, she opens her legs wider. She slides her hands down inside his loose waistband, over his ass, bowing his hips into her, clutching him against her with a breathy moan. She needs more skin, his and hers, so now she pulls up on the hem of his shirt, tugs it past his shoulders, over the back of his head and off in a heap. His body is feverishly warm and she wants all of it, needs it to warm her own, to vibrate with hers, real and hungry.

As if he hears the thought aloud, he eases her hoodie off her shoulders, over her arms, forgotten behind her on the chair and he pulls her against him again, skating his palms, his long fingers over her back.

There is not nearly enough exposed skin, but what there is is getting cold out here without a fire to keep them warm.

Abbie squeezes his hand. “Blankets in there,” she suggests, nodding toward the bedroom.

Ichabod whines in quiet protest at the loss of her lips. “Blankets, indeed.” He stands, pulling Abbie to her feet. “After you.”

She leads him into the bedroom. There’s a flutter of anxiety in her chest; she hasn’t been in here since the last time. First and last. She couldn’t: it was The Room, then Their Room, then His Room. They had loads of work to do anyway and she had no reason to be in here. But now, now she does, hard as it is to believe. He lays his hands on her shoulders and slides them down over her arms until he holds her hands, dipping his head to the crook of her neck, to the spot he must have committed to memory. She shivers as he presses a lingering peck there, pulling away the elastic straps of her camisole. She lets go of as much anxiety as she can with a deep breath.

She wasn’t sure this would ever happen, wasn’t sure it should. Couldn’t be certain they’d both survive long enough, or ever be ready at the same time. He kisses up her neck now, lips open. The tip of his tongue tastes her skin and at that her knees melt and she swoons back against him. It’s real. It’s real and right and no one is coming for them.

“Come ‘ere,” she mumbles, twisting in his arms, reaching on her tiptoes for a kiss. She means it to be sweet, more playful than anything, but it couldn’t be anything but urgent, not with them, not right now. He sucks at her mouth, clutching her against him, curling down to her as she strains to reach him, threads her fingers in his hair and holds him closer, she would climb him if she could and why is she wearing clothes? Why is he?

He sits on the edge of the bed and she’s on his lap in a heartbeat, straddling his hips while he pulls her shirt up over her belly, up over her breasts and she laughs when he keeps pulling, when he doesn’t seem to notice that her arms are in the way until she lifts them so he can get the damn thing off.

Her beauty is a revelation. Ichabod bends to open his lips over a taut nipple. He can feel her sigh deep in her chest, feel her body relax and sink back into his embrace. He traces a circle with his tongue and is rewarded with gooseflesh as a shiver ripples through her. He laves up her neck to her jaw, nips her earlobe but suddenly impatient Abbie takes his face in her hands and pulls it up for a kiss. He opens for her, follows her lead so that when she presses against him, when her breasts yield against his hard chest, a new strain of desire rises in him. It is exquisite, she is exquisite when she tips forward, laying him back on the mattress. His fingers glide over her back, over the delicious curve of her hips and they both moan to feel them there. He gives a quietly insistent tug on the waistband of her _sweats_ , just an inch, a suggestion and waits for her to tell him no, to tell him she can’t, she won’t, this is a mistake, because certainly that reaction is more likely than his dream that she finally intends to give herself to him. But she does, it seems, as her hands find his in an instant and, twisting to his side for a moment, she helps him slide the rest of her clothes over her lithe legs.

Their hands, all four, are on his waistband almost before her sweats hit the floor, and his fleece is discarded beside them. Entirely bare now, they lie facing each other, all four hands on a mission to feel, to sensitize, even to claim. Abbie’s small hand slides up the side of Ichabod’s leg, tracing tendons and bones, while his large hand plays over the back of Abbie’s leg, charting curves and muscles, savoring the landscape of knee and thigh.

With a groan, Ichabod cups the swell of Abbie’s ass and pulls her close. His hips roll against her, slicking a patch of her belly. The part of her that can’t believe this is happening is quieter now, and quiets even further when she hooks her leg over his hip. He sucks the tip of her tongue as his fingers caress the line of her thigh to the ticklish hollow of her knee, then back, feathering over warmer and warmer skin to where she is swollen and slick. His fingers are light, delicate and her whole body stills as he traces her slit, as he presses a fingertip inside her.

“Abbie,” he whispers, throaty and raw, against her ear.

Is that hesitation she hears in his voice? She curls her hips to encourage him and his breath comes faster as he obliges her, spiraling his long finger deeper. And she slides her arm between their bodies in answer, between their hips, and squeezes her fingers around him. She feels as much as hears his low whine, deep in his chest, and Abbie smiles into his kiss and presses her thumb in a slow stroke up along his cock, hard and straining.

“You ready for this?” Abbie rasps at his lips.

He whimpers a chuckle, thrusting almost helplessly into Abbie’s tight fist.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” she simmers, rolling him onto his back, straddling his hips.

“Yes,” he gasps, heavy lids barely open.

That word dissipates the last of her fear. They want this, both of them, and she doesn’t have to stop herself now. So she braces one hand on his chest, brushing a nipple, and guides him inside her, just the head, just barely. He gazes at her, mouth gaping and swollen from their kisses, panting in the hush. Abbie’s breath is slow and heavy as she looks into his eyes.

Almost a sigh, he says it again, “yes,” and she sinks down with a groan. “Yes,” his voice comes softer, thicker now, his body arches into her as she sinks lower still. “Yes,” and she thrusts slow, deep, taking him inside to the very hilt.

His palms rest on the swell of her hips where they spread over his in a devastating dance of abundance and grace. Ichabod worships her, watches her work herself around him with the hint of a circle. He trusts her in everything, follows her tantalizing lead in this too, helpless in his desire, thrusting into her, enveloped by her, beyond thought. They rock in shared rhythm, anchored body to body. But he yearns for her mouth, as much as he could never tire of watching her face awash in bliss, and so he pushes himself up, clutching her there on his lap again so he can give her his mouth, too. She rides him desperately, kneeling over him, snapping her hips against him harder and harder and drawing his coiling desire further, tighter until he spills with a surprised moan. Shame flushes his cheeks at the thought that he has ended her pleasure before its bloom, but a moment later he feels her close around him in tight, frantic pulses, hears her low, trembling sigh, and knows she was not left behind.

* * *

 

Abbie wakes before dawn, tucked against Ichabod’s chest. His arm is wrapped loosely around her, his hand limp over her shoulder. She watches his chest rise and fall with his breath, feels his heartbeat against her cheek. Her hand is curled in a loose fist over his sternum; she opens her fingers, letting them play lightly in his chest hair. She presses a feather of a kiss to his shoulder.

She stretches a little, not enough to wake him. But it pulls at the wound on her chest, at the tape and the cut. And it reminds her that they are lying naked, pressed together. She shifts closer and her eyes drift closed again at the warmth of his body against hers.

* * *

 

Ichabod lies content in the darkness, eyes closed, listening to the comfortingly regular rhythm of Abbie’s breath, surprisingly slow for such a small body. He thinks of the hummingbird, the mouse, but she is nothing like those fragile creatures. Her knee bends just over his thigh, her breasts swell against his side. His shoulder cradles her warm cheek and the thought of it, finally, of their union after so much longing nearly bursts his heart.

He lifts his head off the pillow to press a light kiss to her head. He brushes his fingertips over her arm in a small arc, lightly enough that it won’t wake her but only reassure her in her sleep. Her breath is heavier for a moment, then soft again.

* * *

 

The birds wake with the dawn, and the sheer curtains do nothing to prevent the first blush of sunlight from finding the two of them. Ichabod awakens to find Abbie rolling away from him in a leonine stretch, arms overhead and a yawn on her lips. Her chest arches up, breasts gloriously offered. Perhaps someday he will have the strength simply to watch her this way, but not today. His arms wrap around her waist and he pulls her, still enjoying the last moments of her morning stretch, beneath him.

She exhales a long, stunningly happy sigh. “Good morning, you.”

He buries his mouth in the hollow of her neck, sucking and nipping at her tender, sensitive skin. Her hands come down over his head as he kisses lower, skirting the dressing of her wound to find her breasts, tonguing a swirl around a nipple once and again until it peaks. He presses deep kisses down the center line of her belly until his head is lost under the blanket. And still further, his hands resting on her hips, kneeling between her thighs as he kisses her thatch of curls with a deep breath, filling his mind with her rich musk. He licks lower, takes an almost timid taste. Her legs fall open further with a sigh. She threads her fingers through his hair again. He answers with another lick, opening her, lapping up that delicious musk before he returns to her button, asleep beneath its hood. He wakes it slowly, gently, with teasing swirls and increasing pressure. When her hips begin to rock he fills her with a long, curling finger.

He takes his time, savoring her, savoring this. The urgency of the previous evening has faded to luxurious ease. He curls his finger into her and her sigh is louder, lower now. He sucks at her button and her hips rise. He would sink into her this second but he denies himself. He wants to give her this. There is time, there is plenty of time for everything and this heady worship is a privilege he cannot squander. He slides a second finger inside her, scissoring them wide, and her sigh becomes a hungry whine. He swirls his tongue in small circles and her hips rock in a gathering rhythm.

Abbie senses that he’s in no hurry. She can tell that he would be happy to make her come just like this, slow and generous, if she would let him, but what she wants even more is to have him inside her again. She takes his face in her hands, welcomes his musky lips on her mouth and then, with a blissful groan, guides him inside. He murmurs something that might be her name when she wraps her legs around his thighs, clutching him to her, binding them together.

It is sweeter than Ichabod ever imagined, to be enveloped in her as her eyelids drift closed, the first pink light of day kissing her skin.

* * *

 

Abbie’s hair takes a while to reclaim after sleeping on it wet. But she hasn’t slept that well in ages, maybe ever, so it’s worth the time.

When she comes out of the bathroom, she finds Ichabod at the table, several old tomes and maps laid out in front of him, sipping the coffee he has come to enjoy in the mornings since she’s been waking up here. Her favorite mug is waiting for her at the empty seat beside him.

“You didn’t have to --” she begins.

But Ichabod shakes his head. “A simple token of my esteem.”

She smiles into the cup and takes a testing sip. It’s hot but not too hot. Perfect. “Oh, your esteem? That’s what we’re calling it?”

“My love,” he corrects himself, his voice soft as satin.

She keeps smiling, beaming at her coffee.

“And my joy.”

“Yeah,” she says, taking his hand. “Me too.”

With his free hand, he pivots the book he was perusing so she can read it. “If I am right, and I pray I am not, this horned creature may provide our next series of tribulations.”

“Ugly.” She squeezes his hand. “'S okay. We got this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I raise my glass (of wine, not beer) to every one of you, readers. Your enthusiasm fueled my (filthy, angsty) imagination and provided much-needed inspiration during the very dark months of this wretched second season. Thank you.
> 
> This arc is over. I hope there are more to come. I desperately hope this show that is finally showing sparks of life again is renewed, and that the third season lives up to its first season promise. I hope the undeniable chemistry of our beloved duo is nurtured and fostered. If it is, how could I stay away?

**Author's Note:**

> This here scene is one point in a triangle of smut mutually dared by CreepingMuse, latbfan, and me back before Christmas. Allusions to CreepingMuse’s "She and He" are purposeful, as much because her story is canon to me as that her stunningly fantastic work deserves acts of literary allusion. 
> 
> The story doesn’t end like this. They work together, fighting the good but very difficult fight. They struggle to get back what they lost. There are hiccups and errant touches and moments when they could be honest with each other but aren’t. And eventually, something else will happen. When it does, I promise to post it.


End file.
